The community of western nations needs to reassure Turks of its enduring friendship, and of its commitment to Turkey’s future within that community,” writes Sinan Ülgen, a visiting scholar to Carnegie Europe, in the Financial Times. “That is the only way to counter swelling anti-Americanism and alienation from the west.”

Further excerpts from Ülgen’s article below:

The task for Washington and Brussels, therefore, is to rebuild trust.

For Washington the key to doing that will be formally to initiate, sooner rather than later, the process of extradition for Mr Gulen requested by Ankara. It is clear that a political decision by the White House will not be sufficient to achieve this goal. The administration of President Barack Obama has said it would require credible evidence to comply with any such request, and that such a request should go through a judicial review. Nonetheless the administration can choose to ease the tension in bilateral relations by initiating the judicial process and supporting, as a matter of principle as well as a foreign policy objective, the extradition request. (…)

Washington and Brussels should now move to preserve liberal democracy in Turkey and to consolidate Turkey’s western vocation. Their apathy in the face of an existential danger barely contained by Turkish democracy is doing the exact opposite.